Today marks the North American release of Thief, the second AAA game title touted to support Mantle, AMD's ambitious Direct3D alternative. We have also seen some heavy marketing for how TrueAudio will make the game more awesome. Unfortunately it isn't launching with out of the box support for either technology. Eidos has Mantle and TrueAudio support "scheduled for March".

Thief is part of AMD's Gaming Evolved ecosystem, which puts it in AMD's inner circle of developer support. The only other studio and game that boasts of the same, which is in the market, are DICE and Battlefield 4. Based on a heavily modified Unreal Engine 3, Thief will run DirectX 11 out of the box.

No. I think the general discussion/PR regarding Mantle focused on the Frostbite engine games, but unless people supposed that Thief was one of the supposed 15 Frostbite games supporting Mantle which obviously isn't the case, then the game was confirmed long ago as UE3

It is kinda funny. because I always heard people yell on how thief is going to show the TRUE power of mantle since thief was supposed to be be build up from the ground up supporting mantle.
well I guess that kinda went wrong.

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Only in the respect that it wont launch with Mantle, isn't overly demanding on hardware, and has mediocre gameplay. Other than those points it is truly revolutionary

Since it's not made by an EA studio it was never intended to run on Frostbite.

The bigger issue for AMD is that this makes 2 AAA titles that promised Mantle support, that launched without it, delayed it's implementation, and suffered badly from technical issues at launch and were negatively recieved because of it. AMD really needs a AAA title to be successful and launch with Mantle for it to have any chance of being successful...

so, the second game that would really show us what Mantle could do....is another buggy, unpolished release that doesnt have mantle avaliable upon release. between this and BF4, amd is doing a really good job of convincing me that Mantle will never really take off properly, but rather buzz and sputter until it inevitably smacks into the ground.

so, the second game that would really show us what Mantle could do....is another buggy, unpolished release that doesnt have mantle avaliable upon release. between this and BF4, amd is doing a really good job of convincing me that Mantle will never really take off properly, but rather buzz and sputter until it inevitably smacks into the ground.

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Lol..

Unnecessary rants? I believe you don't have to wait mantle to play this game. I guess your cards don't support mantle at all. (And i guess will never support mantle)

mantle is free dude../facepalm

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@xenocide : i haven't heard any news before that said thief games will be mantle supported on the release day since mantle is new born API.

so, the second game that would really show us what Mantle could do....is another buggy, unpolished release that doesnt have mantle avaliable upon release. between this and BF4, amd is doing a really good job of convincing me that Mantle will never really take off properly, but rather buzz and sputter until it inevitably smacks into the ground.

Yes, I think I'll join you. On the bright side, we may not have to wait very long!Kotaku's Thief reviewEGM Now's Thief review

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OOh the pain of reading those reviews, i guess they still making PC games like console games and not PC games as PC games as reading though one of those reviews it sounds like they made it so simple to play.. Like WTF windows doors close automatically behind WTF..

Shame to i like the campany i think they could pull of good games but they trying to hard to make them for console's to and not make them for PC and nerf them after for consoles.

I have a keyboard bitches give me a reason to use it. GOD Dammit Square ENIX \ Eidos Interactive

Unnecessary rants? I believe you don't have to wait mantle to play this game. I guess your cards don't support mantle at all. (And i guess will never support mantle)

mantle is free dude../facepalm

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@newteki : i haven't heard any news before that said thief games will be mantle supported on the release day since mantle is new born API.

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I know you dont NEED mantle, but this was one of the games that kept coming up in a list of "good game s that will show what mantle can do", of course, the game is being panned as a poor title, which is dissapointing in of itself, but having to wait for mantle is just another sign that developers dont seem to think very highly of mantle.

i was genuinely excited for mantle when i first heard about it. but, it seems that nobody can get it right, which is rather sad.

yea, mantle is free. woopee! now, lets see something actually USE IT. not tech demos. not benchmarks. FULL GAMES. Im tired of being teased on how great mantle is supossed to be, but nobody can seem to get it right...

I know you dont NEED mantle, but this was one of the games that kept coming up in a list of "good game s that will show what mantle can do", of course, the game is being panned as a poor title, which is dissapointing in of itself, but having to wait for mantle is just another sign that developers dont seem to think very highly of mantle.

i was genuinely excited for mantle when i first heard about it. but, it seems that nobody can get it right, which is rather sad.

yea, mantle is free. woopee! now, lets see something actually USE IT. not tech demos. not benchmarks. FULL GAMES. Im tired of being teased on how great mantle is supossed to be, but nobody can seem to get it right...

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To explain you in simple terms - Learning curve - When PS3 was lunched with cell processors - Game developers took time to learn to get the most out of it. Like wise Mantle is a new API - teams will take time to get it right.

Is it a bad thing that certain GPU users are getting performance boost for free - Directx was their since beginning, Thief is launched with it - so why complain when company is going to add feature a month later which will boost performance for particular GPU users for FREE ?

Nearly, but OpenGL had it beat by three years - more if you consider its IRIS GL origins. The moral of that particular story is DirectX and OGL endure because they are vendor agnostic from the beginning. Glide, RRedline/Speedy3D, S3d, Matrox Simple Interface, Creative Graphics Library and a host of other vendor specific API's fell by the wayside because they remained proprietary, or were opened up too late to other vendors graphics.

Nearly, but OpenGL had it beat by three years - more if you consider its IRIS GL origins. The moral of that particular story is DirectX and OGL endure because they are vendor agnostic from the beginning. Glide, RRedline/Speedy3D, S3d, Matrox Simple Interface, Creative Graphics Library and a host of other vendor specific API's fell by the wayside because they remained proprietary, or were opened up too late to other vendors graphics.

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Actually its great news for us as a customer - Mantle has finally pushed this companies to do better.

You are derailing the topic, we are discussing Thief and Free Mantle API for PC gamers - (Remember this news is about PC game ?)

Again - 1 month delay might be big deal for you, but all i am saying here is if it free i don't know why i should complain, plus its not that this game is not functioning at all without this Mantle API.

I know you dont NEED mantle, but this was one of the games that kept coming up in a list of "good game s that will show what mantle can do", of course, the game is being panned as a poor title, which is dissapointing in of itself, but having to wait for mantle is just another sign that developers dont seem to think very highly of mantle.

i was genuinely excited for mantle when i first heard about it. but, it seems that nobody can get it right, which is rather sad.

yea, mantle is free. woopee! now, lets see something actually USE IT. not tech demos. not benchmarks. FULL GAMES. Im tired of being teased on how great mantle is supossed to be, but nobody can seem to get it right...

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well..
it's a new born API compared with directX or OpenGL..
time will tell while this API get mature..

Was hoping to see Mantle in action, but on the other hand - it runs as smooth as butter already. The previously linked reviews are a bit harsh - the game has it's flaws, but it's not rubbish either. I'm enjoying the game